Embracing digital transformation. Did someone say mainframe?

The world of business infrastructure is modernising like a city skyline.

Rising high above the rest are the areas involving data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and, of course, regulation. It’s a powerful ecosystem with an exciting future – one that requires balance and careful consideration.

But still nestled in to the architecture of modern business and perhaps surprising everyone, is the mainframe. Could it be that we’re dealing with an anomaly in the business landscape?

There’s no doubt that digital transformation is focusing primarily on our ability to negotiate a transition to cloud environments, but as it turns out, that shift is slower than predicted, particularly in the areas of financial services and retail.

The mainframe was predicted to die out around the turn of the millennium, but many companies are in fact continuing to depend on, and even invest in this ‘legacy’ estate.

In a previous post we looked at the perspectives from Ensono and Kevin Stoodley from IBM on the transformational impact of the mainframe and whether it was an anomaly. Today, we take a look from another perspective – the mainframe’s relevance in a cloud-centric world.
In this blog, Ensono and Kevin Stoodley, IBM Fellow and CTO of IBM Z look at why the mainframe remains a capable and necessary part of the enterprise IT ecosystem.